ASUS Maximus III Formula LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

A Closer Look at the Maximus III Formula pt.2

The overall expansion slot layout and assortment is excellent. There are three full-sized PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots. In a single graphics card configuration, the top PCI-E x16 slot will operate at the full x16 speed while the bottom slot will run at x4. When two graphics cards are installed in the top and middle x16 slots, they will operate at x8 each with the bottom slot once again operating at x4. This motherboard does support Quad-GPU CrossFireX and Quad-GPU SLI with two dual-GPU graphics cards. Attempting to run three graphics cards would be pointless for gaming purposes since the third card would run at x4 and thus be a huge bottleneck. However, if you partake in Folding@Home or would like a card to run PhysX, you could can utilize three graphics cards on this motherboard without issue.

The race car-like START button has become of a staple of the RoG models, and it has found its way onto the Maximus III Formula as well. Under the reset button, you may notice the "GP OC Station" label and the black header to the right of it. That is where you can plug in the unique OC Station, hardware-level overclocking console that installs into two 5.25" case bays.


Starting from left to right, we have the VIA VT6308P IEEE1394/FireWire controller, the Winbond W83667HG-A Super I/O & hardware monitoring controller, and the Realtek 8110SC Gigabit LAN PCI-Express controller. The audio CODEC is obviously located on the aforementioned SupremeFX X-Fi audio card.


The 'northbridge' heatsink has an attractive design, but it's really mostly there for show since there is no northbridge. At most, it absorbs some of the heat load produced by the MOSFETs and transfered by the heatpipe. The center logo on the cooler also has a neat backlight, which looks pretty decent.

In the image on the right, you can the flattened heatpipe, and the PCI-E x1 slot that is used to house the SupremeFX X-Fi audio card. Also, you can spot two fan headers. Above the lowermost fan header, there is a black 2-pin header. That is a thermal sensor header, of which there are 3 on this motherboard. This would be quite impressive, but for some reason ASUS have decided to skimp out and have not included any thermal sensors cables.


Starting from left to right, the rear I/O panel features a PS/2 keyboard port, a CMOS reset button, 8 USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN port, a FireWire port, an eSATA port, the RoG Connect On/Off switch, and the RoG Connect port, which is where you plug the RoG Connect cable into.


When we turned over the MIIIF, we were very surprised that it was not outfitted with heatsinks for the back-mounted MOSFETs, since this is a design feature found on the P7P55D Deluxe. Nevertheless, we are glad to see that all the heatsinks are held in place with proper mounting screws.